How to upgrade all Python packages with pip

Question

Is it possible to upgrade all Python packages at one time with pip?

Note: that there is a feature request for this on the official issue tracker.

Horatia

Beware software rot—upgrading dependencies might break your app. You can list the exact version of all installed packages with pip freeze (like bundle install or npm shrinkwrap). Best to save a copy of that before tinkering. – Wenwenceslaus

If you want to update a single package and all of its dependencies (arguably a more sensible approach), do this: pip install -U --upgrade-strategy eager your-package – Chasidychasing

I use PowerShell 7 and currently I use this one-liner: pip list --format freeze | %{pip install --upgrade $_.split('==')[0]} (I am unable to post an answer here yet) – Bensen

For those wondering like me, the was until recently pip didn't have a dependency resolver. github.com/pypa/pip/issues/4551 – Selectivity

Answer 1

There isn't a built-in flag yet. Starting with pip version 22.3, the --outdated and --format=freeze have become mutually exclusive. Use Python, to parse the JSON output:

pip --disable-pip-version-check list --outdated --format=json | python -c "import json, sys; print('\n'.join([x['name'] for x in json.load(sys.stdin)]))" | xargs -n1 pip install -U

If you are using pip<22.3 you can use:

pip list --outdated --format=freeze | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1  | xargs -n1 pip install -U

For older versions of pip:

pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1  | xargs -n1 pip install -U

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• The grep is to skip editable ("-e") package definitions, as suggested by @jawache. (Yes, you could replace grep+cut with sed or awk or perl or...).

• The -n1 flag for xargs prevents stopping everything if updating one package fails (thanks @andsens).

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Note: there are infinite potential variations for this. I'm trying to keep this answer short and simple, but please do suggest variations in the comments!

Stimulant

Right :( The issue now lives at github.com/pypa/pip/issues/59 . But every suggestion seems to be answered with "Yeah, but I'm too sure if X is the right way to do Y"... Now is better than never? Practicality beats purity? :( – Stimulant

It also prints those packages that were installed with a normal package manager (like apt-get or Synaptic). If I execute this pip install -U, it will update all packages. I'm afraid it can cause some conflict with apt-get. – Togetherness

Spot on - added an exclude to the grep to ignore editable packages. pip freeze --local | grep -v "\-e" | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs pip install -U – Embargo

@PiotrDobrogost I've been trying to keep it simple. But, well, make sense. I've included it (with a small fix: I've pinned the regex to the beginning of the package name, in order to avoid excluding packages like "<something>-e<something else>". – Stimulant

How about changing grep to: egrep -v '^(\-e|#)' (i get this line when running it on ubuntu 12.10: "## FIXME: could not find svn URL in dependency_links for this package:". – Stoichiometric

You could also just use sed, for a much simpler line, e.g. (and this doesn't hit everything you included, but in principle it easily could): pip freeze --local | sed 's/==.*//' | xargs pip install -U. – Calomel

How about this pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -i bash -c 'pip install -U {} || :' to prevent exit on error? – Entangle

I'd throw in a tee before doing the actual upgrade so that you can get a list of the original verisons. E.g. pip freeze --local | tee before_upgrade.txt | ... That way it would be easier to revert if there's any problems. – Azoth

@EmilH there are endless possibilities of enhancing or customising this :) I won't add your suggestion to the answer, to keep it simple (as much as possible). But it's a good one, thanks :) – Stimulant

If for some reason pip fails in the middle of it all (i.e. a package no longer exists) you can add -n1 to xargs, this makes it pass only one argument at a time to pip, otherwise pip quits on the first error. – Robert

@Robert Is there any reason to not use -n1? Seems like it might make sense to include it by default... – Varanasi

@CrawfordComeaux No, not that I can think of :-) – Robert

The following incantation is updated to use pip list --outdated. It ignores any error or warning messages and does not consider them. pip list --outdated | grep -G '(Current.*)' | sed 's/ (Current.*//' | xargs -n 1 sudo pip install --upgrade – Biramous

@richard-bronosky I've reverted your edit, although it was perfectly valid and probably even a good idea. As I've mentioned before, there are infinite variations of this solution, and I'm trying to keep the solution simple and as short as it's reasonable. For the record, Richard's solution was: pip freeze --local | tee before.pip.txt | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip install -U (i.e., including "tee" to create a "before.pip.txt" file with the contents of "pip freeze" before the upgrade) – Stimulant

@rbp, that's fair. I have some suggestions since code golfing is the goal. (You said "simple and as short as it's reasonable") Instead of piping grep & cut, you can save a process and chars by using a single tool. Save 3 chars with awk pip freeze --local | awk -F = '!/^-e/{print $1}' | xargs -n1 pip install -U or 10 chars with sed pip freeze --local | sed '/^-e/d;s/=.*//' | xargs -n1 pip install -U. – Florineflorio

User installed packages (i.e. those in ~/.local) should be handled separately, or they would be replaced with non-user installs. This looks like a decent task for a Github gist until pip has upgrade-all. – Scalise

Adding a sudo to the last element was required for me: pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | sudo xargs -n1 pip install - – Ambiguous

@LukeDupin if you're installing packages globally, then yes, you might need that. If you're using virtualenv, it shouldn't be necessary. – Stimulant

Good example of pipes, but I would still use pip-review. Simple is better than complex;) – Smithsonite

@Smithsonite Perhaps, I've never used pip-review. You'll notice that this answer is way older than pip-review :) – Stimulant

I added -H to sudo to avoid an annoying error message: $ pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 sudo -H pip install -U – Antitank

pip list --outdated | grep -v 'sqlite3 (0.0.0)' | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip install -U (to avoid upgrading sqilte3) – Subscription

Getting errors when running the above command on OSX, this answer: https://mcmap.net/q/25076/-pip-is-not-able-to-install-packages-correctly-permission-denied-error-duplicate solved the issue. i.e. run: pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip install -U --user – Xenos

I highly recommend running pip check afterwards to check if any upgrades caused a dependency to no longer be satisfied for another package. – Walther

Is there any reason not to use xargs -P to parallelize the updates? – Haemolysin

The output is hard to read for outdated answer. This one is excellent: #2720514 – Mckay

Permission denied... Any way to prevent this operating on system packages? – Undesirable

In order to get rid of the permission issue, you might want to change it a bit into $pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 sudo -H pip install -U – Belamy

@Stimulant Issue #59 is closed and references to upgrade-all command #4551, which depends on a not yet implemented dependency resolver #988 – Comitia

This is exhaustive, it runs --upgrade on all packages , waste of time, we would upgrade the ones which are outdated right. – Ewart

@pradyunsg, add xargs -r to prevent running upgrade commands if nothing to upgrade! :) – Morisco

To upgrade for logged in user (so doesn't require sudo): pip3 freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip install --user -U – Ernesternesta

Another reason to use pip list --outdated --format=freeze instead of pip freeze --local is that the latter does not upgrade pip itself if needed. – Davies

This failed on Windows 7: 'grep' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. – Hurt

Why the ˋxargsˋ? – Quisling

pip 10 has added --exclude-editable option. pip.pypa.io/en/stable/news/#id30 – Sweetscented

The output can be ambiguous when using this command. For a much more easily readable output, use this instead: #2720514 – Mckay

In Python 3 there will be an error TypeError: '>' not supported between instances of 'Version' and 'Version' – Iggie

@QinHeyang I don't follow. The command-line on the answer runs on bash. If you're getting this error, it's something to do with pip. – Stimulant

Has anyone figured out how to do this on Windows? – Canal

There seems to be a bug in the current version of pip that I have reported here: github.com/pypa/pip/issues/8331. When I run this command, pkg_resources==0.0.0 is getting added. Omitted -U in pip install seems to work – Sunbreak

pip was listing itself as outdated, which was breaking my brew installation. removing pip from the list of packages to update helps: pip list --outdated --format=freeze | grep -v "pip=="| grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | grep -v pip | xargs -n1 pip install -U. Of course if another package ends with "pip" then it won't get updated, either :) – Digest

As of August 2020, this gives me many messages like so ERROR: After October 2020 you may experience errors when installing or updating packages. This is because pip will change the way that it resolves dependency conflicts. is there a way to upgrade to dependencies along with the actual module? – Lengthen

pip list has a --not-required option, which excludes packages that are dependencies of other installed packages. – Chagres

@Lengthen Got the same error. Added --use-feature=2020-resolver at the end of the command and that resolved it. – Kedgeree

Seems like on Ubuntu, this also "updates" to an old version of distro-info, which breaks do-release-upgrade. See this AskUbuntu question askubuntu.com/questions/1182208/… – Wilcher

Why show the cmd for older pip versions, is this still in use? Should I use an old pip version? – Quisling

Python3 version: pip3 list --outdated --format=freeze | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip3 install -U – Hardnett

What is grep -v '^\-e' doing? Ah, read the whole post first! – Quisling

I recently discovered that pip list has a --user option, which restricts the output to the user's site-packages. This avoids messing with distro-info on Ubuntu, which can cause serious problems. – Chagres

This has stopped working and gives a TypeError now. – Sequence

careful using this because it will likely override your distribution python packages – Hilbert

pip list --outdated --format=freeze | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip install -U --user - This is also a useful command. – Teeming

What about adding -r to xargs, so it won't run pip -U at all if there are no outdated packages? I did find this useful, otherwise I'd get the annoying message ERROR: You must give at least one requirement to install (see "pip help install") if I'd type that command in some environment with no outdated packages. NOTE: it seems -r option to xargs is a GNU extension. Enjoy! – Shoot

The grep-to-cut seems silly (and only gets sillier in the comments that grep multiple times), the output of --format freeze screams awk. pip list -o --format freeze | awk 'BEGIN { FS="==" } { print $1 }' | xargs -n1 pip install -U – Citrine

Nit: a superfluous space in the current edition of the answer, this part of the command (before the pipe): cut -d = -f 1 | – Denmark

With latest pip format 'freeze' can not be used with the --outdated option anymore. – Wes

For those (like me) who did not understand instantly: pip3 --disable-pip-version-check list --outdated --format=json | python3 -c "import json, sys; print('\n'.join([x['name'] for x in json.load(sys.stdin)]))" | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip3 install -U – Wes

You can use pip3 list --outdated --format=json | jq -r '.[] | "\(.name)==\(.latest_version)"' | xargs -n1 pip3 install --upgrade. – Blotter

The first command is a lil bit misleading. It just lists the packages, NOT install/upgrade those. – Hispidulous

Plus one for the comment of @Suuuehgi, the cmd works, but one need to install jq. The first command lists outdated pip packages, the third cmd works for me: pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip install -U. – Quisling

So the above generates a nice list of packages which have an update available. What is the remaining syntax to actually upgrade the identified packages; for WINDOWS? – Asparagine

The answer to my own question is: pip --disable-pip-version-check list --outdated --format=json | python -c "import json, sys, subprocess; [subprocess.call(['pip', 'install', '--upgrade', x['name']]) for x in json.load(sys.stdin)]" – Asparagine

For pip3 on the mac: pip3 list --outdated | awk '{print $1}' | xargs -n1 pip3 install --upgrade worked for me. – Salchunas

Answer 2

To upgrade all local packages, you can install pip-review:

$ pip install pip-review

After that, you can either upgrade the packages interactively:

$ pip-review --local --interactive

Or automatically:

$ pip-review --local --auto

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pip-review is a fork of pip-tools. See pip-tools issue mentioned by @knedlsepp. pip-review package works but pip-tools package no longer works. pip-review is looking for a new maintainer.

pip-review works on Windows since version 0.5.

Outsell

NameError: name 'raw_input' is not defined -- Broken for me. – Cimah

@hauzer: It doesn't support Python 3. Though it might be a bug – Outsell

@mkoistinen It's a good tool but until it's merged in PIP it means installing something additional which not everyone may desire to do. – Episcopate

Works fine with mingw. Why are you using CMD on Windows if you're also using Python? – Barrick

@Wernight: if you can't install additional Python packages then you don't need pip-review (that automates installing new versions for you). In other words if you are in an environment where it makes sense to use pip-review tool then you can afford to install it too. – Outsell

@J.F.Sebastian Yes pip-review is to upgrade and freeze dependencies. I meant that one will have pip-review in its dev-requirements.txt. It could become part of PIP. – Episcopate

@julianz: There is pip-toos-win, although I haven't tried it. – Pixie

How to upgrade stuff for Python 3? It does not do so by default. – Nary

@ziyuang create a new virtualenv using Python 3 version and install the necessary packages (pip-dump may help you to maintain the requirements file). See Upgrade python in a virtualenv – Outsell

If it no longer works, then shouldn't that be edited into the answer, since so many people don't read comments? – Substrate

pip-review works just fine (at least for Python version 3.5.0) – Smithsonite

pip-review should work under Windows as of version 0.5 (pypi.python.org/pypi/pip-review/0.5). Otherwise, please submit a ticket to github.com/jgonggrijp/pip-review/issues. – Trophy

To skip system packages: pip-review --auto --user – Undesirable

The output can be ambiguous when using this command. For a much more easily readable output, use this instead: #2720514 – Mckay

For Windows, use python.exe -m pip_review instead of pip-review. (note the underscore instead of the dash) – Iggie

pip-review --local --interactive does not seem to work: Complete output (5 lines): Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in <module> File "/tmp/pip-install-ikq9nwd2/onedrivesdk/setup.py", line 9, in <module> with open(NOTICE, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f: NotADirectoryError: [Errno 20] Not a directory: '/tmp/pip-install-ikq9nwd2/onedrivesdk/setup.py/../NOTICE.rst' ---------------------------------------- ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1: python setup.py egg_info Check the logs for full command output. – Prison

@Gerd: it looks like an issue with the onedrivesdk package that is unrelated to pip-review. – Outsell

Doesn't work with proxy, at least I didn't see that option – Hypotrachelium

It can take a lot of time to complete the run depending on how many packages are installed. – Typewriting

Answer 3

You can use the following Python code. Unlike pip freeze, this will not print warnings and FIXME errors. For pip < 10.0.1

import pip
from subprocess import call

packages = [dist.project_name for dist in pip.get_installed_distributions()]
call("pip install --upgrade " + ' '.join(packages), shell=True)

For pip >= 10.0.1

import pkg_resources
from subprocess import call

packages = [dist.project_name for dist in pkg_resources.working_set]
call("pip install --upgrade " + ' '.join(packages), shell=True)

Bicapsular

This works amazingly well… It's always so satisfying when a task takes a REALLY long time… and gives you a bunch of new stuff! PS: Run it as root if you're on OS X! – Cingulum

Is there no way to install using pip without calling a subprocess? Something like import pip pip.install('packagename')? – Katinakatine

@aspinei See my answer for Windows version of the shell script. – Yugoslavia

I wrapped this up in a fabfile.py. Thanks! – Perpetual

Question, will that upgrade System Packages as well? (Running as root)? If so, is there a way to prevent this instead of using virtualenv? Thanks. – Shipway

@BenMezger: You really shouldn't be using system packages in your virtualenv. You also really shouldn't run more than a handful of trusted, well-known programs as root. Run your virtualenvs with --no-site-packages (default in recent versions). – Limy

Thumbs up for this one, the chosen answer (above) fails if a package can't be found any more. This script simply continues to the next packages, wonderful. – Nashoma

It's awesome that this can be run within python! If I wanted it to print out whether or not a package was successfully updated, how would I modify this script? – Schleicher

This doesn't work and possibly screws things up work for dealing with system-wide packages. – Petromilli

Should be the accepted answer. Only one issue came up, if you have two or more Python installations in your Windows, only one gets to upgrade the packages. pip in this case is the pip.exe of the "default" Python. I changed it to call("%s\\Scripts\\pip.exe install --upgrade %s" % (dirname(sys.executable), dist.project_name), shell=True) which of course makes it unusable on non-Windows platforms, though. – Topheavy

I hope this is the feature that gets implemented in pip package proper. Just a function pip.updateall() would be perfect. – Torticollis

It's weird how pip doesn't write --upgrade flag in their help – Andie

@AminahNuraini: It does. – Guglielma

pip freeze has a lot of permission denied for me even with sudo. this answer perfectly solves my problem – Gobert

Permission denied... Any way to prevent this operating on system packages? – Undesirable

@TomHale Check the dist.location and filter the list accordingly. – Demur

This works with ActiveState ActivePython. However, after you do this, if you try to run a .py file by relying on the file association. Windows will attempt to run the ActiveState ActivePython installer again. – Miltie

Also note that this script fails if one package fails to install (which does happen for certain C extensions on Windows), while the previous version of the script will continue upgrading everything else. – Crompton

Best answer here. I created a gist on Github here: gist.github.com/SeppPenner/efc73891480b67c561aac7ba47df9df7 – Marvin

The output can be ambiguous when using this command. For a much more easily readable output, use this instead: #2720514 – Mckay

I had to change the last line to [call("pip install " + name + " --upgrade") for name in packages] – Samarium

@Nashoma fabric is for ssh, if I do not need ssh is your fabfile also interesting? I ask because the cmd of the answer for pip>10 does not work, I get an error when importing pkg_resources – Quisling

@Nashoma the fabfile does not work in pip >10 – Quisling

It worked for me on Windows for pip>=10.0.1 without changing anything. – Mundt

@Topheavy if you change the line from subprocess import call to from subprocess import call, executable and the call line to call([executable, "-mpip", "install", "--upgrade"].extend(packages)], shell=True) then it will call the pip for the current executable regardless of platform, venv, etc. – Quartz

@SteveBarnes: thanks, agreed, I am aware of that method meanwhile and prefer it even. In addition on Windows I am preaching to people to use the Python loader (py) instead of some hardcoded paths to some possibly installed Python. As a side note, between my comment (from 2015) and now, I have also simply tapped into the pip module directly instead of doing that via the shell. E.g. in one project I had the project offer the option to pull in missing packages. – Topheavy

Answer 4

The following works on Windows and should be good for others too ($ is whatever directory you're in, in the command prompt. For example, C:/Users/Username).

Do

$ pip freeze > requirements.txt

Open the text file, replace the == with >=, or have sed do it for you:

$ sed -i 's/==/>=/g' requirements.txt

and execute:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt --upgrade

If you have a problem with a certain package stalling the upgrade (NumPy sometimes), just go to the directory ($), comment out the name (add a # before it) and run the upgrade again. You can later uncomment that section back. This is also great for copying Python global environments.

---

Another way:

I also like the pip-review method:

py2
$ pip install pip-review

$ pip-review --local --interactive

py3
$ pip3 install pip-review

$ py -3 -m pip-review --local --interactive

You can select 'a' to upgrade all packages; if one upgrade fails, run it again and it continues at the next one.

Mcgruter

You should remove requirements.txt's =={version}. For example: python-dateutil==2.4.2 to python-dateutil for all lines. – Narbonne

I found that this didn't actually upgrade the packages on macOS. – Reputable

@Narbonne I would recommand a quick 'Replace all "==" > ">=" ' in your editor/ide before running 'pip install...' to fix this – Biel

This is exactly what I wanted. I have a python virtualenv and I needed keep it up to date. It upgraded all existing packages in the requirements.txt. – Throaty

Although I like very much the jfs solution with pip-review, this solution gives you the flexibility to choose what you want upgrade or not, easily. @Amaury-Liet good catch! – Bouncing

for linux: $ pip freeze | cut -d '=' -f1> requirements.txt in order to remove the version – Gregarine

If the shell you use is bash, you can shorten it into one command via pip3 install -r <(pip3 freeze) --upgrade Effectively, <(pip3 freeze) is an anonymous pipe, but it will act as a file object – Peep

And in case it fails on a single package, you can make it xargs -L 1 -a <(pip3 freeze) pip3 install --upgrade – Peep

Works for me in Ubuntu 16.04 (with@Cavaz's modification): $ pip freeze | cut -d '=' -f1> reqs and then I open file and comment cytoolz (using #) which was causing errors; finally $ pip install -r reqs --upgrade. – Substrate

Combine the above comments, this one-liner pip3 install -r <(pip3 freeze | cut -d '=' -f1) --upgrade works on Bash. – Hyracoid

As this answer relates to Windows, here is a PS try: $pfr=$(pip freeze > requirements.txt) $pfr=$pfr.split('='). Error WARNING: Could not generate requirement for distribution -p 20.2.3 (c:\python39\lib\site-packages): Parse error at "'-p==20.2'": Expected W:(abcd...) – Quisling

I am on python 3. py -3 -m pip-review --local --interactive gave an error: No module named pip-review. Simply pip-review worked for me. – Ascocarp

In 2023, I had to use: pip list --format=freeze > requirements.txt The update gave me errors: OS error file not found. In the generated requirements.txt there were weird paths. Solution comes from: link – Teachin

Answer 5

Use pipupgrade! ... last release 2019

pip install pipupgrade
pipupgrade --verbose --latest --yes

pipupgrade helps you upgrade your system, local or packages from a requirements.txt file! It also selectively upgrades packages that don't break change.

pipupgrade also ensures to upgrade packages present within multiple Python environments. It is compatible with Python 2.7+, Python 3.4+ and pip 9+, pip 10+, pip 18+, pip 19+.

Note: I'm the author of the tool.

Magnificent

Nice idea, but it's stuck at Checking... forever when I tried it. – Draggle

@CGFoX I believe that's been fixed with 1.5.0 – Magnificent

@Chris @CGFoX Try deleting pip cache ~/.cache/pip and ~/Library/Caches/pip (on macOS) – Magnificent

Added this as a Known Issue - github.com/achillesrasquinha/pipupgrade/issues/30 – Magnificent

Got an error on Windows 10 and Python 3.7.5: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ctypes.windll' – Iggie

@QinHeyang this has been fixed recently. – Magnificent

raspberry Pi Jessie need sudo pip to install – Acutance

It seems that this will upgrade all packages to the latest version and that may break some dependencies. – Whittemore

@Whittemore you could then not use the --latest flag since it upgrades dependencies that possibly break change. – Magnificent

Fails on my venv. It seems to try to run /usr/bin/pip2 from the OS which fails. – Lineberry

Why would you say this tool avoids breaking changes but only provide the way to run it that DOES install breaking changes? – Chasidychasing

Answer 6

Windows version after consulting the excellent documentation for FOR by Rob van der Woude:

for /F "delims===" %i in ('pip freeze') do pip install --upgrade %i

Yugoslavia

for /F "delims= " %i in ('pip list --outdated') do pip install -U %i Quicker since it'll only try and update "outdated" packages – Ectoblast

@RefaelAckermann I suspect this will be slower than the original :) To know which packages are outdated pip has to first check what's the latest version of each package. It does exactly the same as the first step when updating and does not proceed if there's no newer version available. However in your version pip will check versions two times, the first time to establish the list of outdated packages and the second time when updating packages on this list. – Yugoslavia

@PiotrDobrogost, If we want to analyse this rigorously ;) let n be number of installed packages, and m <= n number of "outdated" packages. your's will spin-up pip for ALL packages for 1 + n executions of pip with n*log(n) web lookups for versions and all dependencies, and m downloads and installs. Mine will do n web lookups for the --outdated call then will only spinup m pip calls with m*log(n) web lookups for dependencies + m download and installs. for if m << n I win :) – Ectoblast

@RefaelAckermann Spinning up pip is order of magnitude faster than checking version of a package over network so that's number of checks which should be optimized not number of spin ups. Mine makes n checks, yours makes n+m checks. – Yugoslavia

+1 - It's 6.20.2019, I'm using Python 3.7.3 on WIndows 10, and this was the best way for me to update all my local packages. – Convenience

Need to skip the first two lines of the output: for /F "skip=2 delims= " %i in ('pip list --outdated') do pip install --upgrade %i. If this is run from a batch file, make sure to use %%i instead of %i. Also note that it's cleaner to update pip prior to running this command using python -m pip install --upgrade pip. – Backbite

@PiotrDobrogost I tried your solution for windows 10 but it's not works. here's a print-screen – Stralka

@αԋɱҽԃαмєяιcαη this is for cmd.exe, where the for command is built-in. It is not for powershell, where it would be better to use a native looping construct. If you still wanted to use this solution in powershell you would need to invoke cmd.exe explicitly: cmd /c "for /F ""delims==="" %i in ('pip freeze -l') do pip install -U %i" – Oid

Answer 7

This option seems to me more straightforward and readable:

pip install -U `pip list --outdated | awk 'NR>2 {print $1}'`

---

The explanation is that pip list --outdated outputs a list of all the outdated packages in this format:

Package   Version Latest Type
--------- ------- ------ -----
fonttools 3.31.0  3.32.0 wheel
urllib3   1.24    1.24.1 wheel
requests  2.20.0  2.20.1 wheel

In the AWK command, NR>2 skips the first two records (lines) and {print $1} selects the first word of each line (as suggested by SergioAraujo, I removed tail -n +3 since awk can indeed handle skipping records).

Rothberg

If one upgrade fails, none of the upgrades happen. – Wilcher

Use the version from the first answer with | xargs -n1 to prevent stop on failures – Ferroconcrete

Answer 8

The following one-liner might prove of help:

(pip >= 22.3)

as per this readable answer:

pip install -U `pip list --outdated | awk 'NR>2 {print $1}'`

or as per the accepted answer:

pip --disable-pip-version-check list --outdated --format=json |
    python -c "import json, sys; print('\n'.join([x['name'] for x in json.load(sys.stdin)]))" |
    xargs -n1 pip install -U

---

(pip 20.0 < 22.3)

pip list --format freeze --outdated | sed 's/=.*//g' | xargs -n1 pip install -U

Older Versions:

pip list --format freeze --outdated | sed 's/(.*//g' | xargs -n1 pip install -U

xargs -n1 keeps going if an error occurs.

If you need more "fine grained" control over what is omitted and what raises an error you should not add the -n1 flag and explicitly define the errors to ignore, by "piping" the following line for each separate error:

| sed 's/^<First characters of the error>.*//'

Here is a working example:

pip list --format freeze --outdated | sed 's/=.*//g' | sed 's/^<First characters of the first error>.*//' | sed 's/^<First characters of the second error>.*//' | xargs pip install -U

Bobbiebobbin

Had to add filters for lines beginning with 'Could' and 'Some' because apparently pip sends warnings to stdout :( – Monarchist

OK, this is fair: You can add as many | sed 's/^<First characters of the error>.*//' as needed. Thank you! – Bobbiebobbin

Or: pip list --outdated | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | xargs -n 1 pip install --upgrade – Lumpfish

that works for me, with python3.12 out of the box: pip3 list -o | cut -f1 -d' ' | tr " " "\n" | awk '{if(NR>=3)print}' | cut -d' ' -f1 | xargs -n1 pip3 install -U – Methodize

Answer 9

You can just print the packages that are outdated:

pip freeze | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n 1 pip search | grep -B2 'LATEST:'

Offing

Inside a virtualenv, I do it like this: pip freeze --local | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n 1 pip search | grep -B2 'LATEST:' – Supramolecular

Nowadays you can also do that with python -m pip list outdated (though it's not in requirements format). – Heathenism

@Heathenism I think you meant python -m pip list --outdated. – Luteous

Answer 10

More Robust Solution

For pip3, use this:

pip3 freeze --local |sed -rn 's/^([^=# \t\\][^ \t=]*)=.*/echo; echo Processing \1 ...; pip3 install -U \1/p' |sh

For pip, just remove the 3s as such:

pip freeze --local |sed -rn 's/^([^=# \t\\][^ \t=]*)=.*/echo; echo Processing \1 ...; pip install -U \1/p' |sh

OS X Oddity

OS X, as of July 2017, ships with a very old version of sed (a dozen years old). To get extended regular expressions, use -E instead of -r in the solution above.

Solving Issues with Popular Solutions

This solution is well designed and tested¹, whereas there are problems with even the most popular solutions.

• Portability issues due to changing pip command line features
• Crashing of xargs because of common pip or pip3 child process failures
• Crowded logging from the raw xargs output
• Relying on a Python-to-OS bridge while potentially upgrading it³

The above command uses the simplest and most portable pip syntax in combination with sed and sh to overcome these issues completely. Details of the sed operation can be scrutinized with the commented version².

---

Details

[1] Tested and regularly used in a Linux 4.8.16-200.fc24.x86_64 cluster and tested on five other Linux/Unix flavors. It also runs on Cygwin64 installed on Windows 10. Testing on iOS is needed.

[2] To see the anatomy of the command more clearly, this is the exact equivalent of the above pip3 command with comments:

# Match lines from pip's local package list output
# that meet the following three criteria and pass the
# package name to the replacement string in group 1.
# (a) Do not start with invalid characters
# (b) Follow the rule of no white space in the package names
# (c) Immediately follow the package name with an equal sign
sed="s/^([^=# \t\\][^ \t=]*)=.*"

# Separate the output of package upgrades with a blank line
sed="$sed/echo"

# Indicate what package is being processed
sed="$sed; echo Processing \1 ..."

# Perform the upgrade using just the valid package name
sed="$sed; pip3 install -U \1"

# Output the commands
sed="$sed/p"

# Stream edit the list as above
# and pass the commands to a shell
pip3 freeze --local | sed -rn "$sed" | sh

[3] Upgrading a Python or PIP component that is also used in the upgrading of a Python or PIP component can be a potential cause of a deadlock or package database corruption.

Mckay

another way to overcome the jurassic BSD sed of OS X is to use gsed (GNU sed) instead. To get it, brew install gnu-sed – Nicholasnichole

@WalterTross ... Jurassic ... good adjective use. So we now have two ways to group update pip packages with a nice audit trail on the terminal. (1) Use the -E option as in the answer and (2) install gsed to leave the Jurassic period. – Mckay

Answer 11

I had the same problem with upgrading. Thing is, I never upgrade all packages. I upgrade only what I need, because project may break.

Because there was no easy way for upgrading package by package, and updating the requirements.txt file, I wrote this pip-upgrader which also updates the versions in your requirements.txt file for the packages chosen (or all packages).

Installation

pip install pip-upgrader

Usage

Activate your virtualenv (important, because it will also install the new versions of upgraded packages in current virtualenv).

cd into your project directory, then run:

pip-upgrade

Advanced usage

If the requirements are placed in a non-standard location, send them as arguments:

pip-upgrade path/to/requirements.txt

If you already know what package you want to upgrade, simply send them as arguments:

pip-upgrade -p django -p celery -p dateutil

If you need to upgrade to pre-release / post-release version, add --prerelease argument to your command.

Full disclosure: I wrote this package.

Koski

This is what pip should do by default. – Systemize

heads up with your tool some character escapes don't seem to work correctly on my windows machine but other than that it's fine – Disown

haven't really tested it on windows, but i'll install a virtual machine. Thanks – Koski

If virtualenv is not enabled pip-upgrade --skip-virtualenv-check – Ewart

Just wanted to let you know that I really like the flow of pip-upgrader. It immediately made a lot of sense to me. Thank you! – Dashing

This works also with a requirements folder having common, dev and prod requirements. Simply great! – Favus

Answer 12

This seems more concise.

pip list --outdated | cut -d ' ' -f1 | xargs -n1 pip install -U

Explanation:

pip list --outdated gets lines like these

urllib3 (1.7.1) - Latest: 1.15.1 [wheel]
wheel (0.24.0) - Latest: 0.29.0 [wheel]

In cut -d ' ' -f1, -d ' ' sets "space" as the delimiter, -f1 means to get the first column.

So the above lines becomes:

urllib3
wheel

Then pass them to xargs to run the command, pip install -U, with each line as appending arguments.

-n1 limits the number of arguments passed to each command pip install -U to be 1.

Levi

I received this warning DEPRECATION: The default format will switch to columns in the future. You can use --format=(legacy|columns) (or define a format=(legacy|columns) in your pip.conf under the [list] section) to disable this warning. – Condescendence

@Reman: that is because you are using Pip v9.0.1. This is just a deprecation message meaning that some functionalities will not survive in a future Pip release. Nothing to be concerned about ;) – Applicable

However, this has to be marked as the final solution. Indeed the accepted answer will run all over your pip packages, which is a waste of time if you have to update only 1 or 2 packages. This solution, as instead, will run just all over the outdated packages – Applicable

I like this approach except this includes the lines Package and -------------- in the output that'll ultimately be be passed to pip install -U. I'm going to post an updated answer with my solution using sed and this approach without the above mentioned issue. – Dorettadorette

Answer 13

One-liner version of Ramana's answer.

python -c 'import pip, subprocess; [subprocess.call("pip install -U " + d.project_name, shell=1) for d in pip.get_installed_distributions()]'

Capability

subprocess.call("sudo pip install... in case you need permissions – Frizzly

@MaximilianoRios Please do not sudo pip install, use a virtual env, instead. – Cayser

Answer 14

From yolk:

pip install -U `yolk -U | awk '{print $1}' | uniq`

However, you need to get yolk first:

sudo pip install -U yolk

Undertrump

Last commit 7 years ago – Wilcher

Answer 15

The pip_upgrade_outdated (based on this older script) does the job. According to its documentation:

usage: pip_upgrade_outdated [-h] [-3 | -2 | --pip_cmd PIP_CMD]
                            [--serial | --parallel] [--dry_run] [--verbose]
                            [--version]

Upgrade outdated python packages with pip.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  -3                 use pip3
  -2                 use pip2
  --pip_cmd PIP_CMD  use PIP_CMD (default pip)
  --serial, -s       upgrade in serial (default)
  --parallel, -p     upgrade in parallel
  --dry_run, -n      get list, but don't upgrade
  --verbose, -v      may be specified multiple times
  --version          show program's version number and exit

Step 1:

pip install pip-upgrade-outdated

Step 2:

pip_upgrade_outdated

Trochophore

Step 1: pip install pip-upgrade-outdated Step 2: pip-upgrade-outdated ...done – Archaimbaud

This is indeed a really good package. Needs more publicity, I have been working in python for a long while and this is the first time I hear about it. Nice! – Goldoni

@MarioChapa Thanks -- I wrote it (based on a gist). – Shagbark

In windows, %USERPROFILE%\anaconda3\envs\bridge\scripts\pip_upgrade_outdated.exe – Tadio

Answer 16

When using a virtualenv and if you just want to upgrade packages added to your virtualenv, you may want to do:

pip install `pip freeze -l | cut --fields=1 -d = -` --upgrade

Crawly

Answer 17

Updating Python packages on Windows or Linux

1. Output a list of installed packages into a requirements file (requirements.txt):

   pip freeze > requirements.txt
   

2. Edit requirements.txt, and replace all ‘==’ with ‘>=’. Use the ‘Replace All’ command in the editor.

3. Upgrade all outdated packages

   pip install -r requirements.txt --upgrade
   

Source: How to Update All Python Packages

Outgo

This just works. Just do an pip freeze > requirements.txt afterwards to see the acutal diff. – Nereen

pip freeze | sed 's/==/>=/' > requirements.txt to swap the == with >= automatically. – Wilcher

May be good to use another name rather than requirements.txt so you don't accidentally clobber a local requirements.txt from a package. – Graeco

Answer 18

Windows PowerShell solution

pip freeze | %{$_.split('==')[0]} | %{pip install --upgrade $_}

Airy

pip list --outdated | %{$_.split('==')[0]} | %{pip install --upgrade $_}? – Cornetist

Perhaps pip list --outdated --format freeze | %{$_.split('==')[0]} | %{pip install --upgrade $_} would be more appropriate. – Revelatory

Why is pip list --outdated --format freeze.. preferred over the suggested answer in Powershell, @Revelatory – Quisling

@Quisling When I wrote that comment the suggested answer only used pip list instead of pip freeze. I figured --format freeze would be more robust against possible changes in future updates than letting pip list decide the format. pip freeze also works! – Revelatory

its even better to have it as function in your profile! This is perfect for anyone using powershell – Sic

Answer 19

The simplest and fastest solution that I found in the pip issue discussion is:

pip install pipdate
pipdate

Source: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/3819

Panamerican

Whereas other solutions stalled upon encountering the slightest anomaly, this solution warned and then skipped the problem to continue with the other packages. Great! – Dandridge

up voting this, Works perfectly in windows – Chary

I used pipdate and now can't find pip or python. Use at your own risk. – Mcclelland

Answer 20

Use AWK update packages:

pip install -U $(pip freeze | awk -F'[=]' '{print $1}')

Windows PowerShell update

foreach($p in $(pip freeze)){ pip install -U $p.Split("=")[0]}

Bisk

And for python 3... pip3 install -U $(pip3 freeze | awk -F'[=]' '{print $1}') – Donaldson

Answer 21

One line in PowerShell 5.1 with administrator rights, Python 3.6.5, and pip version 10.0.1:

pip list -o --format json | ConvertFrom-Json | foreach {pip install $_.name -U --no-warn-script-location}

It works smoothly if there are no broken packages or special wheels in the list...

Waddell

For purely aesthetic reasons, I like this approach the most. The output-producing executable provides our shell the object schema and there is no need for un-labelled index values [0] in the script. – Niela

# Set alias for pip upgrade all outdated package function PipUpgrade-Outdated { pip list -o --format json | ConvertFrom-Json | ForEach-Object {pip install $_.name -U} } – Victualage

something similar in Ubutun, e.g., if using WSL2, would be pip list --outdated --format json | jq '.[].name' | xargs -i pip install {} -U – Victualage

Answer 22

You can try this:

for i in `pip list | awk -F ' ' '{print $1}'`; do pip install --upgrade $i; done

Morbidezza

this is the cleanest, highest readable way to update pip packages in the most amount of brevity. great. – Navar

Answer 23

If you have pip<22.3 installed, a pure Bash/Z shell one-liner for achieving that:

for p in $(pip list -o --format freeze); do pip install -U ${p%%=*}; done

Or, in a nicely-formatted way:

for p in $(pip list -o --format freeze)
do
    pip install -U ${p%%=*}
done

After this you will have pip>=22.3 in which -o and --format freeze are mutually exclusive, and you can no longer use this one-liner.

Enticement

What does <p%%=*> stand for? – Ride

@ᐅdevrimbaris this removes version spec and leaves only package name. You can see it by running for p in $(pip list -o --format freeze); do echo "${p} -> ${p%%=*}"; done. In more general way, ${haystack%%needle} means delete longest match of needle from back of haystack. – Enticement

Answer 24

The rather amazing yolk makes this easy.

pip install yolk3k # Don't install `yolk`, see https://github.com/cakebread/yolk/issues/35
yolk --upgrade

For more information on yolk: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/yolk/0.4.3

It can do lots of things you'll probably find useful.

Lathy

Answer 25

Use:

pip install -r <(pip freeze) --upgrade

Yolande

Answer 26

The shortest and easiest on Windows.

pip freeze > requirements.txt && pip install --upgrade -r requirements.txt && rm requirements.txt

Petr

@Enkouyami on windows 7 this command does not work without the -r. -r must preclude the path to the requirements file. – Bookrack

In what context? CMD? PowerShell? Cygwin? Anaconda? Something else? – Inchworm

Answer 27

There is not necessary to be so troublesome or install some package.

Update pip packages on Linux shell:

pip list --outdated --format=freeze | awk -F"==" '{print $1}' | xargs -i pip install -U {}

Update pip packages on Windows powershell:

pip list --outdated --format=freeze | ForEach { pip install -U $_.split("==")[0] }

Some points:

• Replace pip as your python version to pip3 or pip2.
• pip list --outdated to check outdated pip packages.
• --format on my pip version 22.0.3 only has 3 types: columns (default), freeze, or json. freeze is better option in command pipes.
• Keep command simple and usable as many systems as possible.

Explicative

Thank you for the PowerShell snippet, this was the most useful answer for me! – Goblin

On pip3 it fails with: ERROR: List format 'freeze' cannot be used with the --outdated option. – Folklore

Answer 28

Ramana's answer worked the best for me, of those here, but I had to add a few catches:

import pip
for dist in pip.get_installed_distributions():
    if 'site-packages' in dist.location:
        try:
            pip.call_subprocess(['pip', 'install', '-U', dist.key])
        except Exception, exc:
            print exc

The site-packages check excludes my development packages, because they are not located in the system site-packages directory. The try-except simply skips packages that have been removed from PyPI.

To endolith: I was hoping for an easy pip.install(dist.key, upgrade=True), too, but it doesn't look like pip was meant to be used by anything but the command line (the docs don't mention the internal API, and the pip developers didn't use docstrings).

Biedermeier

On Ubuntu (and other Debian derivatives), pip apparently puts packages in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages or similar. You could use '/usr/local/lib/' instead of 'site-packages' in the if statement in this case. – Scrope

Answer 29

Sent through a pull-request to the pip folks; in the meantime use this pip library solution I wrote:

from operator import attrgetter

## Old solution:
# from pip import get_installed_distributions
# from pip.commands import install
## New solution:
from pkg_resources import working_set
from pip._internal.commands import install    

install_cmd = install.InstallCommand()

options, args = install_cmd.parse_args(
    ## Old solution:
    # list(map(attrgetter("project_name")
    #          get_installed_distributions()))
    ## New solution:
    list(map(attrgetter("project_name"), working_set))
)

options.upgrade = True
install_cmd.run(options, args)  # Chuck this in a try/except and print as wanted

Eulaheulalee

Version with error handling (as per comment): gist.github.com/SamuelMarks/7885f2e8e5f0562b1063 – Eulaheulalee

On pip3 there is no such function as get_installed_distributions – Folklore

@Folklore - For at least a little while, this will work instead: install_cmd.parse_args(list(map(attrgetter("project_name"), working_set))) - I'll edit this answer – Eulaheulalee

Answer 30

This ought to be more effective:

pip3 list -o | grep -v -i warning | cut -f1 -d' ' | tr " " "\n" | awk '{if(NR>=3)print}' | cut -d' ' -f1 | xargs -n1 pip3 install -U

1. pip list -o lists outdated packages;
2. grep -v -i warning inverted match on warning to avoid errors when updating
3. cut -f1 -d1' ' returns the first word - the name of the outdated package;
4. tr "\n|\r" " " converts the multiline result from cut into a single-line, space-separated list;
5. awk '{if(NR>=3)print}' skips header lines
6. cut -d' ' -f1 fetches the first column
7. xargs -n1 pip install -U takes 1 argument from the pipe left of it, and passes it to the command to upgrade the list of packages.

Merlenemerlin

Here's my output: kerberos iwlib PyYAML Could pygpgme Could Could Could ... Note all the "Could"s. Those stem from output of pip list -o of "Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement <package>" – Derron

Comments don't format this well, but here's a snippet (line endings are marked with ';'): # pip list -o; urwid (Current: 1.1.1 Latest: 1.3.0); Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement python-default-encoding; pycups (Current: 1.9.63 Latest: 1.9.68); Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement policycoreutils-default-encoding; Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement sepolicy; – Derron

instead of filtering out all lines which shouldn't be used, I would suggest to filter the lines where an update exists: pip install -U $(pip list -o | grep -i current | cut -f1 -d' ' | tr "\n|\r" " ") . Otherwise you could easily miss one line you don't want and get the result which DrStrangeprk mentioned. – Delectate

I would strongly recommend using xargs instead. pip list -o | awk '/Current:/ {print $1}' | xargs -rp -- pip install -U The -r flag ensures that pip install -U won't be run if there are no outdated packages. The -p flag prompts the user to confirm before executing any command. You can add the -n1 flag to have it prompt you prior to installing each package separately. – Selfdenial

Answer 31

This is a PowerShell solution for Python 3:

pip3 list --outdated --format=legacy | ForEach { pip3 install -U $_.split(" ")[0] }

And for Python 2:

pip2 list --outdated --format=legacy | ForEach { pip2 install -U $_.split(" ")[0] }

This upgrades the packages one by one. So a

pip3 check
pip2 check

afterwards should make sure no dependencies are broken.

Ninety

At least with pip>=22.3, legacy is no longer an available format – Appolonia

Answer 32

This seemed to work for me...

pip install -U $(pip list --outdated | awk '{printf $1" "}')

I used printf with a space afterwards to properly separate the package names.

Odericus

Answer 33

A JSON + jq answer:

pip list -o --format json | jq '.[] | .name' | xargs pip install -U

Arroba

the jq filtering can be further simplified to jq -c '.[].name' – Ster

Answer 34

See all outdated packages

pip list --outdated --format=columns

Install

sudo pip install pipdate

then type

sudo -H pipdate

Zasuwa

Answer 35

Here's the code for updating all Python 3 packages (in the activated virtualenv) via pip:

import pkg_resources
from subprocess import call

for dist in pkg_resources.working_set:
    call("python3 -m pip install --upgrade " + dist.project_name, shell=True)

Inaction

Answer 36

Here is my variation on rbp's answer, which bypasses "editable" and development distributions. It shares two flaws of the original: it re-downloads and reinstalls unnecessarily; and an error on one package will prevent the upgrade of every package after that.

pip freeze |sed -ne 's/==.*//p' |xargs pip install -U --

Related bug reports, a bit disjointed after the migration from Bitbucket:

• https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/49
• https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/59

Ikeda

Answer 37

Here is a script that only updates the outdated packages.

import os, sys
from subprocess import check_output, call

file = check_output(["pip.exe",  "list", "--outdated", "--format=legacy"])
line = str(file).split()

for distro in line[::6]:
    call("pip install --upgrade " + distro, shell=True)

For a new version of pip that does not output as a legacy format (version 18+):

import os, sys
from subprocess import check_output, call

file = check_output(["pip.exe", "list", "-o", "--format=json"])
line = str(file).split()

for distro in line[1::8]:
    distro = str(distro).strip('"\",')
    call("pip install --upgrade " + distro, shell=True)

Bibliolatry

That sadly no longer works. pip --format does not accept "legacy" as a choice. At least not on my python release. – Jail

@StormShadow as you hope know, pip really poorly control depencies. it does exactly as other solution - yep(( Better to add disclaimer – Pneumoencephalogram

Answer 38

Use:

import pip
pkgs = [p.key for p in pip.get_installed_distributions()]
for pkg in pkgs:
    pip.main(['install', '--upgrade', pkg])

Or even:

import pip
commands = ['install', '--upgrade']
pkgs = commands.extend([p.key for p in pip.get_installed_distributions()])
pip.main(commands)

It works fast as it is not constantly launching a shell.

Quartz

Does constantly launching a shell really make a measurable difference when we'll end up downloading packages from pypi followed by (compilation and) installation? – Nicky

@Nicky I my experience yes it does, especially in an environment where you have aggressive anti-virus software that you can't turn off running. Where I work we cannot disable or suppress the AV and each shell launch takes 20-30 seconds but, on good days, we do have a fast internet connection. When you are installing large packages the installation time can be significant but when it is a lot of smaller package the shell start time is very significant. – Quartz

Answer 39

I've been using pur lately. It's simple and to the point. It updates your requirements.txt file to reflect the upgrades and you can then upgrade with your requirements.txt file as usual.

$ pip install pur
...
Successfully installed pur-4.0.1

$ pur
Updated boto3: 1.4.2 -> 1.4.4
Updated Django: 1.10.4 -> 1.10.5
Updated django-bootstrap3: 7.1.0 -> 8.1.0
All requirements up-to-date.

$ pip install --upgrade -r requirements.txt
Successfully installed Django-1.10.5 ...

Blas

Answer 40

The below Windows cmd snippet does the following:

• Upgrades pip to latest version.

• Upgrades all outdated packages.
• For each packages being upgraded checks requirements.txt for any version specifiers.

@echo off
Setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
rem https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2720014/

echo Upgrading pip...
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
echo.

echo Upgrading packages...
set upgrade_count=0
pip list --outdated > pip-upgrade-outdated.txt
for /F "skip=2 tokens=1,3 delims= " %%i in (pip-upgrade-outdated.txt) do (
    echo ^>%%i
    set package=%%i
    set latest=%%j
    set requirements=!package!

    rem for each outdated package check for any version requirements:
    set dotest=1
    for /F %%r in (.\python\requirements.txt) do (
        if !dotest!==1 (
            call :substr "%%r" !package! _substr
            rem check if a given line refers to a package we are about to upgrade:
            if "%%r" NEQ !_substr! (
                rem check if the line contains more than just a package name:
                if "%%r" NEQ "!package!" (
                    rem set requirements to the contents of the line:
                    echo requirements: %%r, latest: !latest!
                    set requirements=%%r
                )
                rem stop testing after the first instance found,
                rem prevents from mistakenly matching "py" with "pylint", "numpy" etc.
                rem requirements.txt must be structured with shorter names going first
                set dotest=0
            )
        )
    )
    rem pip install !requirements!
    pip install --upgrade !requirements!
    set /a "upgrade_count+=1"
    echo.
)

if !upgrade_count!==0 (
    echo All packages are up to date.
) else (
    type pip-upgrade-outdated.txt
)

if "%1" neq "-silent" (
    echo.
    set /p temp="> Press Enter to exit..."
)
exit /b


:substr
rem string substition done in a separate subroutine -
rem allows expand both variables in the substring syntax.
rem replaces str_search with an empty string.
rem returns the result in the 3rd parameter, passed by reference from the caller.
set str_source=%1
set str_search=%2
set str_result=!str_source:%str_search%=!
set "%~3=!str_result!"
rem echo !str_source!, !str_search!, !str_result!
exit /b

Backbite

@ScamCast Glad you liked it! I've just updated the snipped to the latest version I'm using. – Backbite

for /F "skip=2" %G in ('pip list --outdated') do pip install %G --upgrade should do the job as well however preceding python -m pip install --upgrade pip isn't a bad idea:) – Numeration

Answer 41

I have tried the code of Ramana and I found out on Ubuntu you have to write sudo for each command. Here is my script which works fine on Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander):

#!/usr/bin/env python
import pip
from subprocess import call

for dist in pip.get_installed_distributions():
    call("sudo pip install --upgrade " + dist.project_name, shell=True)

Delectate

Answer 42

Here is another way of doing with a script in Python:

import pip, tempfile, contextlib

with tempfile.TemporaryFile('w+') as temp:
    with contextlib.redirect_stdout(temp):
        pip.main(['list', '-o'])
    temp.seek(0)
    for line in temp:
        pk = line.split()[0]
        print('--> updating', pk, '<--')
        pip.main(['install', '-U', pk])

Coincidence

Answer 43

One liner (bash). Shortest, easiest, for me.

pip install -U $(pip freeze | cut -d = -f 1)

Explanations:

• pip freeze returns package_name==version for each package
• cut -d = -f 1 means "for each line, return the 1st line's field where fields are delimited by ="
• $(cmd) returns the result of command cmd. So here, cmd will return the list of package names and pip install -U will upgrade them.

Riyadh

I find this syntax more readable: pip install --upgrade `pip freeze | cut -d '=' -f 1`. – Feint

That's the same, it's just bash syntax preferences, not command changes – Riyadh

Answer 44

import os
import pip
from subprocess import call, check_call

pip_check_list = ['pip', 'pip3']
pip_list = []
FNULL = open(os.devnull, 'w')


for s_pip in pip_check_list:
    try:
        check_call([s_pip, '-h'], stdout=FNULL)
        pip_list.append(s_pip)
    except FileNotFoundError:
        pass


for dist in pip.get_installed_distributions():
    for pip in pip_list:
        call("{0} install --upgrade ".format(pip) + dist.project_name, shell=True)

I took Ramana's answer and made it pip3 friendly.

Meanly

Answer 45

As another answer here stated:

pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip install -U

Is a possible solution: Some comments here, myself included, had issues with permissions while using this command. A little change to the following solved those for me.

pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 sudo -H pip install -U

Note the added sudo -H which allowed the command to run with root permissions.

To upgrade only outdated versions on a local / user environment for pip3

pip3 install --user -U `pip3 list -ol --format=json|grep -Po 'name": "\K.*?(?=")'`

The switch -ol works similar to --outdated --local or -o --user. On Debian Testing you might also add the switch --break-system-packages to install command. But do that only on your own risk. This command might be useful on super up-to-date systems where AI runs and anything with root is avoided. It helps porting from Stable Diffusion 1.5 to 2.1 with rocm support for example.

Belamy

Use the first version with a virtual environment and the second (sudo -H) version when updating the packages for your whole system. – Maquette

Answer 46

If you are on macOS,

1. make sure you have Homebrew installed
2. install jq in order to read the JSON you’re about to generate

brew install jq

3. update each item on the list of outdated packages generated by pip3 list --outdated

pip3 install --upgrade  `pip3 list --outdated --format json | jq '.[] | .name' | awk -F'"' '{print $2}'`

Ejecta

Works for linux as well, given jq is universal (and already installed). – Annmarieannnora

the following also works fine pip list --outdated --format json | jq '.[].name' | xargs -i pip install {} -U – Victualage

Answer 47

One line in cmd:

for /F "delims= " %i in ('pip list --outdated --format=legacy') do pip install -U %i

So a

pip check

afterwards should make sure no dependencies are broken.

Cowry

Answer 48

I use this one liner set up as an alias to upgrade my pip3 packages:

pip3 list --outdated | sed '1,2d; s/ .*//' | xargs -n1 pip3 install -U

or alternatively

pip3 list --outdated | tail -n +3 | cut -d ' ' -f1 | xargs -n1 pip3 install -U

(note that while it's most likely the case these aliases will work with most shells, you're shell will have to support either pip, sed, and xargs for the first alias or pip, tail, cut, and xargs for the 2nd alias which come preinstalled on most nix/nix-like systems)

1. pip3 list --outdated gets a list of installed outdated pip3 packages:

$ pip3 list --outdated
Package        Version Latest Type
-------------- ------- ------ -----
dbus-python    1.2.18  1.3.2  sdist
pycairo        1.20.1  1.25.1 sdist
PyGObject      3.42.1  3.46.0 sdist
systemd-python 234     235    sdist

2. sed '1,2d; s/ .*//' or tail -n +3 | cut -d ' ' -f1 removes the first 2 lines of output and all characters inclusively after the first space character for each remaining line:

pip3 list --outdated | sed '1,2d; s/ .*//'
# pip3 list --outdated | tail -n +3 | cut -d ' ' -f1
dbus-python
pycairo
PyGObject
systemd-python

3. xargs -n1 pip3 install -U passes the name of each package as an argument to pip3 install -U (pip command to recursively upgrade all packages).

I ran some benchmarks and sed appeared to be faster on my system. I usedsed and then tail and cut to edit a text file input 5000 times and timed it. Here are the results:

sed:
------------------
real    0m9.188s
user    0m6.217s
sys 0m3.232s

tail-cut:
------------------
real    0m12.869s
user    0m13.913s
sys 0m9.921s

The benchmark setup can be found in the gist -> HERE <-

Dorettadorette

Answer 49

for in a bat script:

call pip freeze > requirements.txt
call powershell "(Get-Content requirements.txt) | ForEach-Object { $_ -replace '==', '>=' } | Set-Content requirements.txt"
call pip install -r requirements.txt --upgrade

Patton

Answer 50

To upgrade all of your pip default packages in your default Python version, just run the below Python code in your terminal or command prompt:

import subprocess
import re

pkg_list = subprocess.getoutput('pip freeze')

pkg_list = pkg_list.split('\n')

new_pkg = []
for i in pkg_list:
    re.findall(r"^(.*)==.*", str(i))
    new = re.findall(r"^(.*)==.*", str(i))[0]
    new_pkg.append(new)

for i in new_pkg:
    print(subprocess.getoutput('pip install '+str(i)+' --upgrade'))

Sapling

Answer 51

1. By using pip-upgrader

   • using this library you can easily upgrade all the dependencies packages. These are set up you follows.

     pip install pip-upgrader
     
     pip-upgrade path/of/requirements_txt_file
     

An interactive pip requirements upgrader. Because upgrading requirements, package by package, is a pain in the ass. It also updates the version in your requirements.txt file.

Thorncombe

Answer 52

Use pipx instead:

pipx upgrade-all

Lorant

What is this "pipx" you speak of? E.g., can you add some references? Please respond by editing (changing) your answer, not here in comments (******** without ******** "Edit:", "Update:", or similar - the answer should appear as if it was written today). – Inchworm

pip3 upgrade-all leads to ERROR: unknown command "upgrade-all" I guess that command is removed again – Folklore

pypa.github.io/pipx – Lorant

Answer 53

pip install --upgrade `pip list --format=freeze | cut -d '=' -f 1`

pip list --format=freeze includes pip and setuptools. pip freeze does not.

Feint

See also: stackoverflow.com/a/74988130. – Feint

Answer 54

If you want upgrade only packaged installed by pip, and to avoid upgrading packages that are installed by other tools (like apt, yum etc.), then you can use this script that I use on my Ubuntu (maybe works also on other distros) - based on this post:

printf "To update with pip: pip install -U"
pip list --outdated 2>/dev/null | gawk '{print $1;}' | while read; do pip show "${REPLY}" 2>/dev/null | grep 'Location: /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages' >/dev/null; if (( $? == 0 )); then printf " ${REPLY}"; fi; done; echo

Aurum

Answer 55

I like to use pip-tools to handle this process.

Package pip-tools presents two scripts:

pip-compile: used to create a viable requirements.txt from a requirement.in file. pip-sync: used to sync the local environment pip repository to match that of your requirements.txt file.

If I want to upgrade a particular package say:

django==3.2.12

to

django==3.2.16

I can then change the base version of Django in requirements.in, run pip-compile and then run pip-sync. This will effectively upgrade django (and all dependent packages too) by removing older versions and then installing new versions.

It is very simple to use for upgrades in addition to pip package maintenance.

Annexation

Answer 56

I use the following to upgrade packages installed in /opt/... virtual environments:

( pip=/opt/SOMEPACKAGE/bin/pip; "$pip" install -U $("$pip" list -o | sed -n -e '1,2d; s/[[:space:]].*//p') )

(unrelated tip, if you need shell variables, run commands inside a ( ... ) subshell so as to not pollute)

Forsooth

Answer 57

If you are using venv, where you don't need to use sudo:

$ pip list --outdated --format=json \
    | jq -r '.[].name' \
    | xargs -n1 pip install -U

Explanation

1. pip list --outdated --format=json

Returns JSON-formatted list of all outdated packages

2. jq -r '.[].name'

Extracts name from JSON output

3. xargs -n1 pip install -U

Upgrades all Python packages one by one

Amatruda

Answer 58

That works for me for Python 3.12 out of the box, directly or in a virtual envornment:

pip3 list -o | cut -f1 -d' ' | tr " " "\n" | awk '{if(NR>=3)print}' | cut -d' ' -f1 | xargs -n1 pip3 install -U

Methodize

Answer 59

python -c 'import pip; [pip.main(["install", "--upgrade", d.project_name]) for d in pip.get_installed_distributions()]'

One liner!

Magnificent

On pip3 I get this error: AttributeError: module 'pip' has no attribute 'get_installed_distributions' – Folklore

Answer 60

All posted solutions here break dependencies.

From this conversation to include the functionality directly into pip, including properly managing dependencies:

The author of Meta Package Manager (MPM) writes that MPM can emulate the missing upgrade-all command:

mpm --pip upgrade --all

Onia

What do you mean by "break dependencies"? Can you elaborate? – Inchworm

You run update and then you end up with version conflicts, that's what breaking dependencies means. But it turns out MPM does the same, despite the author promising diffently. – Onia

Answer 61

pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip install -U

Carioca

Thank you for your interest in contributing to the Stack Overflow community. This question already has quite a few answers—including one that has been extensively validated by the community. Are you certain your approach hasn’t been given previously? If so, it would be useful to explain how your approach is different, under what circumstances your approach might be preferred, and/or why you think the previous answers aren’t sufficient. Can you kindly edit your answer to offer an explanation? – Deneb

Answer 62

Another alternative to updating pip packages is:

pip install --upgrade $(pip freeze | cut -d '=' -f 1)

or

python -m pip install --upgrade $(pip freeze | cut -d '=' -f 1)

You can also use:

// python2

pip2 install --upgrade $(pip freeze | cut -d '=' -f 1)
python2 -m pip install --upgrade $(pip freeze | cut -d '=' -f 1) 

// python3 
pip3 install --upgrade $(pip freeze | cut -d '=' -f 1)
python3 -m pip install --upgrade $(pip freeze | cut -d '=' -f 1)  

These commands will update all pip packages.

Treulich

Would you please explain what these do, and how they're different? Copying and pasting commands without understanding what they do is a problem in this industry. – Impudent

What they do is update all the python packages you have, the commands are alternatives for the different versions of python, for example 2.x.x, 3.x.x and the pip version goes with python. – Treulich

You've given six different commands. And there are already several answers to this question. Again, please clarify what each one of them does and how they're different from each other, and from answers that are already here. See How to Answer. – Impudent

Again they are commands to update Python programming language packages, they do the same thing but in different ways, if you don't understand the programming language you won't understand it. – Treulich

I'll ask a different way: Why are there six of them? How should users decide which one to run? And are you sure that these are distinct from all of the other answers that are already here? – Impudent

You must understand that these six are alternatives, you can use them by checking your version of python and if it works, otherwise I would not publish it, something that must be understood, the programmer is never limited to a single option. – Treulich

"the programmer is never limited to a single option"—this question has 81 answers. – Impudent

You're completely missing the point – Impudent